The development of personal digital archives will affect the longterm preservation of cultural heritage, the future of cultural and scientific production, and freedom of expression. It will change the balance between commercial and noncommercial efforts to ensure open, longterm access to information, and change the relationship between institutions and individuals concerned with preservation. And on our best days, personal archiving may even help us fulfill the Confucian responsibility of being good ancestors to our descendants.

We also annually host panels at South by Southwest and staff tables at the National Book Festival. 42 Personal Archiving After Library staff had worked at a few public events for personal archiving, we realized that no matter how much we publish on the web, there is no guarantee that the general public sees or understands any of it. The most effective means of communication is just what we do at the events: answer questions on the spot and directly educate the public. By far the most effective event, in terms of reaching the most people, is the National Book Festival.

As he works, he creates a directory for the slides from each box and then copies the directories upon finishing. ). Eventually, he will transfer all of this data to a database. Digital storage and backup have been primary concerns for Hawkins. He makes three copies of his scanned files. 2 Slides organized in a cigar box stored on an SD card housed in a safe deposit box off-site, a second copy is on a USB drive in his office, and the third is on an external hard drive kept in a different part of his house.